Columbus Changed The World - But For Better Or Worse?

Columbus Days - Sunday Insider

Exactly 499 years ago this month, a skilled Italian sailor stepped ashore on a Caribbean island thinking he had found a quick route to the Indies and a source of gold for his royal benefactors.

He found neither.

But that landing did result in something more lasting than a navigational trophy or opulent treasures. The mariner we know as Christopher Columbus brought together Europeans and American natives, whom Columbus called Indians.

''The process of change inaugurated by that voyage has continued and accelerated as the centuries have passed,'' said Michael Gannon, director of the Institute for Early Contact Period Studies at the University of Florida.

''The Columbus voyage was the pivotal event in modern history, because it linked two streams of humanity,'' he said, adding that it was the beginning of the modern global village, the meshing of different nations and cultures.

By examining the personalities, issues, motivations and technology of Columbus' time, people today may come to better understand current issues, scholars say.

''We can always learn lessons from the reading of the historical record,'' Gannon said.

The lessons are spilling from many sources. Printing presses have spewed forth about 30 Columbus books since the spring, according to industry estimates.

Museums are mounting extravaganzas - the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum is launching a Columbus exhibit Oct. 26 that is the biggest special program the museum has ever developed. An exhibit developed in Florida, ''First Encounters,'' is touring the country.

Researchers and adventurers are seeking Columbus' ships. George Cox, an Orlando bail bondsman, is going to Haiti to search for the wreck of the Santa Maria, the flagship from Columbus' first voyage. Archaeologists from Texas A&M University, searching a Jamaican bay, believe they have found underwater wrecks that may harbor remnants of two ships from Columbus' fourth and last voyage, in 1502.

Scholars are sponsoring Columbus meetings. Next year, for example, the Florida Anthropological Society will offer a three-day conference titled ''In the Wake of Columbus.'' St. Augustine is planning many events to mark the anniversary and other scholarly groups and universities are holding similar programs.

Promoters are offering toys and souvenirs, and some cities are promoting tours and vacations.

But organizers of these events struggle with how to properly mark the occasion. After all, how do you honor a man who ''discovered'' a land that was already populated?

How do you applaud a man who failed abysmally in his original goal - finding a quick and safe route to the silk and spice trade of the Indies, riches for the king and queen of Spain, the sponsors of his journey, and indeed some for himself? Who failed, too, as governor of Spanish settlements in the Caribbean?

How do you ''celebrate'' an encounter that ultimately led to the deaths of untold numbers of Indians from European diseases, and led to development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

And how do you honor a man who, as some critics claim, tarnished an unspoiled land, sowed the seeds of destruction for its native peoples and opened the way for the evils of greed, capitalism and racism to sweep another part of the world?

Carefully, thoughtfully and with an understanding of life 500 years ago, scholars say.

Christopher Columbus was not the saintlike character portrayed in some schoolchildren's texts. He was a complex, fallible man about whom much is uncertain. He lived at a time when Europe was emerging from the Dark Ages and embracing the Renaissance, a time when the medieval kingdoms were evolving into modern, more technological societies and a time when mysticism and enlightenment coexisted and religious feelings ran high.

''Columbus was a product of his time,'' said Robert Fuson, professor emeritus of geography at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

He fervently believed in the Bible and a sense of destiny. ''God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth,'' Columbus wrote.

Fuson, who describes Columbus as a hero, said some hero-bashing is warranted.

''I'm sure we have more truth today'' than if we didn't bash him, said Fuson, whose book on Columbus' log is coming out in paperback this fall.

But he believes that some of the criticism is too extreme.

''To condemn the man that accidentally bumped into some islands for all the evils of the last five centuries is wrong,'' Fuson said. ''There were worse people in the 15th century than Christopher Columbus. They just didn't have his sailing skills.''

There will be plenty of information about the man, the mission and the mayhem to sort through during the next year, scholars say. And they believe people will follow the issues raised because the voyages of Columbus appeal to the explorer in all of us.

Said Gannon, ''We in the U.S. are still exploring the world around us, which accounts for the fact that National Geographic has a circulation of 12 million."